ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the challenge posed by the migrant female subject to Ireland’s gendered borders and focuses, in particular, on recent constitutional debates on citizenship and family life. In June 2004, a referendum on citizenship was held in Ireland. The referendum and subsequent constitutional amendment led to restrictions being imposed on the constitutionally protected right to citizenship by birth. The citizenship referendum followed a period of heated debate on the meaning of citizenship and the terms on which migrant families would be allowed to remain in Ireland. The 1990s had witnessed significant changes in Irish society with Ireland becoming, for the first time, a country of net inward migration. Asylum and immigration, rather than emigration and depopulation, became pressing political issues. Against the background of this changing migration context, Ireland quickly forgot its own history of seeking refuge on distant shores. As the number of migrant workers and asylum applications grew, official discourse in Ireland fell quickly into the fold of ‘fortress Europe’ developing its own ‘fortress Ireland mentality’.1
